WSOP.com Catching Up to Ultimate Poker

Tuesday, November 5th, 2013 by Ryan

There have been a ton of talks recently about the two new sites that were legalized in the United States between Ultimate Poker and WSOP.com. It has instantly turned into a rivalry between the two sites, and it seems that WSOP.com is currently slowly working their way up the rankings and catching up to Ultimate Poker. They are currently only allowed to run games in the state of Nevada, just like Ultimate Poker is, but WSOP.com has made some big moves that point towards some potentially big success in the near future, so they are definitely a site to watch.

WSOP.com decided that they were going to match a player’s VIP status on another site that has a comparable status to WSOP.com. The game plan that was set up here is definitely one by WSOP.com to try to attempt to grab players from Ultimate Poker, as they are really their only competition right now. The promotion is going to be one to watch, especially because it could very well end up causing a big shift between the number of players at Ultimate Poker in comparison to the number of players at WSOP.com, we could see a big shift coming in the near future.

A rep from the site put the offer out there on the sites sponsored section on the popular Two Plus Two poker forum, and the statement that was released was that “Now through the end of December, all WSOP.com members who achieve a certain status level with another online poker site can request to be granted comparable status within WSOP.com.” In order for the players to take advantage of this, they are going to have to email the site at actionclub@wsop.com with their full name, phone number, WSOP.com username, and a screenshot from the competing site that shows the actual VIP status with the site. There isn’t any direct connection between the two VIP programs that the Nevada online poker sites offer, as WSOP has their Action Club, and then Ultimate Poker has the Color Up tiers that players work through. For the email about matching VIP offers, you need to have the subject line say “Comparable Tier Match Request”.

The newest of the sites to Nevada, WSOP.com, has done many things to bring more players onto the site, and one of them was their decision to increase the Action Player Points multipliers for the different status levels. This means that players are able to earn rewards faster than most other sites. As far as the multiplier changes go, the Silver Tier was changed from 1x to 4x, Gold Tier goes from 2x to 5x, Platinum Tier goes from 3.5x to 6x, Diamond Tier goes from 5x to 7.5x, Elite Tier goes from 7x to 10x, and Seven Stars Tier goes from 10x to 15x. Players are going to earn 2 APPs for every $1 in tournament fees that they spend, and in terms of cash games you are going to get 2 APPs for every $1 that is raked, and the players are going to get portions based on how much they put into the pot to contribute to the rake.

The site is also currently running another promotion that will go through the end of November, and the game plan with this promotion is to attempt to draw in some high volume players. It is called the “Grinder Appreciation Month”, and during the month the most frequent players on the site are going to get rewarded with some extra rakeback that goes right on top of whatever APPs they would usually earn from their play. Players who rake at least 100 hands in each of the 15 days during the month are going to get an extra 10 percent rakeback. From there, players who play in 200 raked hands in the 20 days get an extra 20 percent rakeback, and players who play in 500 raked hands every day through November are going to get an additional 30 percent rakeback to go along with their normal.

While WSOP.com is the second legal, regulated online poker room in Nevada, and they just launched back on September 19th, we’ve seen it continue to grow at a solid rate. They did a “soft launch”, which meant that they didn’t do any huge advertising right out of the gate, and they just now started advertising and doing promotions. They haven’t passed Ultimate Poker just yet in terms of cash game traffic numbers, but they are getting close. They currently average 126 cash game players in the seven day average, while Ultimate Poker is averaging 132 cash game players.